GUDANG SHOW NOVEMBER

Here're some images from our show, IKAT BATU, a one-night 'open studio' at Gudang which was chaotic and intense but good though exhausting. Putting up some preparation shots...unfortunately the photos taken by the hired photographers on the opening night came out somewhat crap but we'll post those later. Also some shots of work, which will be better documented in another website. There's a review which describes the show in total (with 4 other artists) on a Malaysian arts portal:

Kakiseni review

There's also more info on the Gudang website:

Gudang

Descriptions of the work are at the end of this post; you can click to blow up these images...


Tessa and Aswad preparing hammock piece


Sek San's red block installation, which cut a series of grids through the entire warehouse

Hammock group tug-of-war to determine hanging position
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HAMMOCK

Measuring about 8 by 18 ft, Tessa's hammock hangs about 30 ft from the rafters. It took about 3000+ feet of string and unknown numbers of laborious weaving. It's a communal piece that can accomodate about 3 adults (maybe more but that makes us nervous)...unfortunately, on opening night a bunch of kids climbed in and used it as a trampoline while we weren't looking, which tore one of the ligaments so we had to put it out of commission for the rest of the night. It's fixed now and perfect for group napping...

The 'moment of truth': first test seating in the hammock



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MOTHS

MOTHS is a form of group portraiture depicting each Malaysian prime minister from independence to the present. An obscured image of each PM is patterned onto the wings, while the wingspan is determined by the amount of years each figure spent in office (in which Dr M. Mahathir measures 22 cm across each wing, and Badawi 2 cm).

Five moths rest on the ground beneath naked incandescent bulbs, ranging from diminutive to grossly enlarged in scale. On approach, the largest begins to nervously test its wings. The moths are all 'inventions', meaning they're not real species, but constructions made from photographs taken at Gudang and at the butterfly museum in KL, printed on paper and folded into shape. The largest, 'Mahathir', is mechanized and attached to a sensor, so that it moves whenever anyone moves closely into range.

Pat of the idea comes from this belief in the east that the moth signifies a visit from an ancestral spirit. So MOTHS presents the ‘founding fathers’ as a kind of lingering presence in the idea of 'nation', while also operating as an historical to current index of power.

'Abdul Razak'

'Mahathir'

'Badawi'

'Tunku Abdul Rahman'

'Hussein Onn'
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IT'S OK WHAT'S HAPPENING RIGHT NOW

IT’S OK is the result of a collaboration with a local artist called Nazim Esa, commissioned / curated by our friend Nani Kahar for the 2005 Hannover Film Festival.

In the fall of 2005, Tessa and I moved to the suburb of Damansara Jaya, in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia. The project is our response to continual late night ramblings through the neighbourhood, during certain ‘dead’ hours when both nothing and everything seems to happen.

IT'S OK was shot entirely with digital still cameras in the dead of night, a laborious process which involved shooting multiple exposures in very low light while holding one’s breath in front of unpaid performers (both friends and solicited strangers) straining to make as little movement as possible. No video or moving film cameras were used. Tens of thousands of images were processed in post-production and re-framed to produce the effect we were looking for.

We won an award at the Malaysian Video Awards for this short (about 6 mins long).



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PLAYING WITH MYSELF

You all probably know I can't play tennis to save my life but that's not really the point of this piece, which uses two televisions spaced a short distance apart. The same figure occupies left and right court, the gap is the unseen net, and they are hitting balls at each other.

Both wear short shorts, brilliant white. One has the full gear: sweatbands for wrists and head, sunglasses, socks pulled up. The other’s plainer and fatiguing: falling socks, one soaked sweatband (on wrist), no shades.

It's a slightly cheeky piece but was difficult to coordinate at the show as we had two different DVD players that we couldn't program to loop the videos simultaneously. Will try to work thyat out for future projects.